Revisiting our favorites at Grand Sichuan House in Bay Ridge yesterday (which was favorably reviewed by Our Man Sietsema last year), we punctuated our chile-pepper-laden Chongqing chicken and cumin lamb with an estimable vegetarian dish from the "cold dishes" portion of the menu.

The dish is composed of wobbly, jelly-like mung bean noodles with scallions in a gritty sauce of ground Sichuan peppercorns, sesame seeds, and chile oil. The noodles, known as liang fen, are made by boiling mung bean starch in water and then cutting the resulting jiggly sheets into strips.

The noodles don't taste like much, but provide a pleasantly cool, slippery canvas for the mouth-numbing sauce. The dish makes a good meatless alternative to another cold Sichuan classic, dan dan noodes, which are usually topped with a heap of ground pork.